Live data from Hacker News

Blacklight – A Real-Time Website Privacy Inspector

themarkup.org

31–40 of 106 posts

Re: Blacklight – A Real-Time Website Privacy Inspector

#31

I feel like we should unify the copyright and privacy laws. If I copy a Disney movie without their knowledge and then extract value from it, for example by watching the movie without paying, everyone agrees that this is theft. And punishment is generally strong to excessive. If a website copies my private data without my knowledge or even after I decline permission by sending DNT headers, that is somehow considered c…

Why would you unify two unrelated things? I think privacy is a right and copyright is so overstretched it literally works against its original intention.

As an aside, the only part of "Intellectual Property" as an idea that I agree with is the right for an author to claim that they authored something. It shoudln't give them a right to control how its distributed or what people do with it. Why would you compare the rights of people to the "rights" of companies? Why would you defend enormous corporations? Disney doesn't have "knowledge". It's not a person.

Re: Blacklight – A Real-Time Website Privacy Inspector

#32
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not aware of any court case where downloading and watching movies without the rights owner's permission was considered OK. Instead, the downloader always had to pay a fine.

That does not make it theft. Copyright infringement is not theft. Theft is legally distinct. It is also morally distinct - the 'owner' of the 'intellectual property' is not deprived of their ownership if someone violates the transactional model by looking without permission. Copyright infringement is not theft. It is interference with a business model. Please stop saying obviously incorrect things.

Respectfully, fxtentacle’s point didn’t hinge on the technical definition of theft. I think they’re trying to point out that illicit data transfers are punished harshly when an individual does it but are considered standard practice and even (by some) praised when corporations do it.

Re: Blacklight – A Real-Time Website Privacy Inspector

#34
Does anyone know of a way to quantify the cost of ad-trackers in terms of cpu/memory/bandwidth/battery? How much more responsive would websites be without all the trackers? How much longer would we keep our phones if they didn't struggle under the weight of all this tracking? How much less data center capacity would be required? How much more bandwidth would be available?

Re: Blacklight – A Real-Time Website Privacy Inspector

#35
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not aware of any court case where downloading and watching movies without the rights owner's permission was considered OK. Instead, the downloader always had to pay a fine.

That does not make it theft. Copyright infringement is not theft. Theft is legally distinct. It is also morally distinct - the 'owner' of the 'intellectual property' is not deprived of their ownership if someone violates the transactional model by looking without permission. Copyright infringement is not theft. It is interference with a business model. Please stop saying obviously incorrect things.

While I agree with you, public opinion probably does not agree with you. And the rhetoric by rights owners has always been downloading==theft. I've added a link to one such propaganda video to my original comment.

Re: Blacklight – A Real-Time Website Privacy Inspector

#37

Does anyone know of a way to quantify the cost of ad-trackers in terms of cpu/memory/bandwidth/battery? How much more responsive would websites be without all the trackers? How much longer would we keep our phones if they didn't struggle under the weight of all this tracking? How much less data center capacity would be required? How much more bandwidth would be available?

How much $ in terms of electricity costs are stolen from me per year by the tracking mafia?

Re: Blacklight – A Real-Time Website Privacy Inspector

#38

Does anyone know of a way to quantify the cost of ad-trackers in terms of cpu/memory/bandwidth/battery? How much more responsive would websites be without all the trackers? How much longer would we keep our phones if they didn't struggle under the weight of all this tracking? How much less data center capacity would be required? How much more bandwidth would be available?

You can use webpage benchmarking tools to measure the size of the script(s) and the resources required to load them.

Re: Blacklight – A Real-Time Website Privacy Inspector

#39

Does anyone know of a way to quantify the cost of ad-trackers in terms of cpu/memory/bandwidth/battery? How much more responsive would websites be without all the trackers? How much longer would we keep our phones if they didn't struggle under the weight of all this tracking? How much less data center capacity would be required? How much more bandwidth would be available?

You can quantify the impact of ad trackers on system resources by measuring the difference in a site's resource utilization with and without an ad blocker.
Post reply on HN